Guided punching apparatus

Abstract

A male die is adapted to be opposed to a first face of a metallic plate member. The male die includes a plurality of punches which are provided on the male die and arranged side by side in a first direction with a fixed pitch. A guide member is formed with a guide face which supports a side portion of the male die, at least when the punches are pressed into the plate member in a second direction, to form through holes therein.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to a method of punching a circular or rectangular minute hole having a diameter or a long side of not greater than about 0.5 mm at a metal board by using an upper die and a lower die. The present invention also relates to a method and an apparatus for manufacturing a liquid ejection head using such a punching method.[0002]An ink jet recording head (hereinafter, referred to as “recording head”) used as an example of a liquid ejection head is provided with a plurality of series of flow paths reaching nozzle orifices from a common ink reservoir via pressure generating chambers in correspondence with the orifices. Further, the respective pressure generating chambers need to form by a fine pitch in correspondence with a recording density to meet a request of downsizing. Therefore, a wall thickness of a partition wall for partitioning contiguous ones of the pressure generating chambers is extremely thinned. Further, an ink sup...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0022]Preferably, the first face is a portion of the plate member which has been subjected to a plastic working. In the portion subjected to the plastic working, since the hardness of the material is increased so that workability is deteriorated, it is more difficult to increase accuracy and die life. However, by preventing bending or escaping of the punches, the advantage of the invention is remarkable in such a condition.

[0023]Here, it is preferable that the portion is a bottom face of a recess; and the bottom face is a slope face. In this case, the distal end portion of the punch is pressed to the slope face at the initial stage of the working so that large bending moment is act on the punch. However, since the punches are guided by the guide member, the bending moment can firmly be received by the guide member so that the through hole can be formed even in such a case. Further, the punch is accurately pressed into the slope face, and the material flow smoothly accompanies with the punch. Therefore, burrs projecting into the recess portion can be prevented from being formed. In a case where the obtained plate member is incorporated in the flow path unit of a liquid ejection head, bubbles in liquid flow will not stay in the flow path so that the ejection property of the liquid ejection head can normally be maintained.

[0024]Preferably, the punches are adapted to be pressed into the plate member comprised of nickel. Since nickel is rich in ductility, it assists the punching work high dimensional accuracy.

[0025]Preferably, the guide member is arranged movably in the second direction. Here, the guide member is formed with a first face, a second face, and a through hole which communicates the first face and the second face. The male die is inserted from an opening of the though hole at the first face, and allowed to move therein in the second direction. An inner face of the through hole serves as the guide face.

[0026]In this case, since the inner face has a high rigidity which can withstand large load, the stable guiding function can be carried out. Further, since the guide face can be ensured immediately by forming the through hole, the guide face can be provided by a simple constitution.

[0027]Here, it is preferable that the second face of the guide member is brought into contact with the plate member, so that the punches are projected from an opening of the through hole at the second face when the through holes are formed. In this case, even in a case where the press length of the punches to the plate member is prolonged, since the guide member is brought into close contact with the plate member, the guiding function of the guide member is achieved at a location as proximate as possible to the portion of generating stresses produced by the punching working, so that the bending or escape of the punches by the working stresses can be surely prevented.

Problems solved by technology

Therefore, enhancement of productivity is difficult to achieve to bring about a factor of increasing fabrication cost.

Therefore, there has been tried to form the pressure generating chamber at the board made of the metal by plastic working, however, the working is difficult since the pressure generating chamber is extremely small and the flow path width of the ink supply port needs to be narrower than the pressure generating chamber to thereby pose a problem that improvement of production efficiency is difficult to achieve.

Therefore, the working is extremely difficult and the working with high accuracy is difficult to thereby pose a problem that improvement of production efficiency is difficult to achieve.

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